“Bottom,” to Cramer, means that the market won’t again sink to the levels we saw back on July 15. (Remember the Dow dipped below 11,000 for the first time since July 2006? Remember the trouble Bank of America, Wachovia, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in? Remember IndyMac?) Recent trends show that’s not going to happen again. Oil prices have come down, house prices are stabilizing, and banks like Merrill Lynch are finally ridding their books of those bad mortgages.

“A bottom is not a call for a major thrust toward 14,000 on the Dow,” Cramer said. “It is a call that says you should buy stocks as they come down” because these signs – oil, housing, banks – mean the market should be turning up.

Cramer even allowed for the possibility that a bad unemployment number Friday could hurt the market even more. But that’s consistent with the kind of reports you get at a bottom when everyone is horribly negative and worried.

“The time to be horribly negative and hysterical was last year when I went ballistic,” Cramer said. “Not now, when the housing and oil problems are finally beginning to be resolved.”